Safe Way: Skip To Your Heart`s Content

As a child, you went skipping because it was fun and sometimes a good way to show off, even though for a boy it usually was a little embarrassing.

But if an adult had told you skipping was healthy, you would have fallen over laughing. After all, only tortures like the dentist`s chair and Brussels sprouts were supposed to be good for you.

Though it sounds crazy, skipping is being touted as healthy exercise these days, and it`s adults who are ``step-hopping`` as a way to get a good workout.

Skipping`s renaissance belongs to a larger exercise trend called ``low-impact aerobics.`` Designed to reduce the injury rate among aerobics students and instructors, a low-impact workout concentrates on exercises that are just as challenging as standard aerobics but less jarring on one`s joints. Hence, skipping.

In Chicago`s health clubs, safe workouts and activities like skipping are becoming more common. Christie Graham--owner of Christie`s, the City Spa--says she has received a number of calls from people interested in ``non-percussive`` ways to work out. She has recommended skipping as one option.

``They want to maintain the fun of aerobics but they find themselves being injured,`` she says. ``So skipping has come into the repertoire of alternative cardiovascular workouts.`` As other alternatives, the City Spa incorporates rope skipping and race walking, which looks like high-speed waddling, in its workout routines.

At the Downtown Sports Club, aerobics director Mary Hollcraft isn`t surprised by the new skipping craze. ``I`ve been using skipping ever since I started teaching aerobics,`` she says. ``It`s natural, it`s fun and it doesn`t take a lot of coordination.``

To support its belief in skipping, the Downtown Sports Club offers an aerobics-skip class every Friday evening. During the hour-long workout, instructor Liz Kater leads pupils through sets of forward, backward and sideways skips. Then she finishes with the ever-popular ``field trip,`` during which the entire class skips around the track, up catwalks, down stairs, through racquetball courts and around the lobby. A humbling experience.

Though it is humbling and sometimes awkward-looking, skipping also is exuberant and youthful. The action itself is reminiscent of moments of childhood freedom, which may help to explain why adults are so attracted to it.

Graham holds to that philosophy. ``Aerobics is really a childlike activity, with all the movement and jumping. Maybe skipping is another way to maintain that activity.``

But skipping`s new popularity isn`t just a baby-boomer regression. Dr. Paul Holleb, a medical consultant to the Downtown Sports Club, notes that two University of California graduate students have studied the effects of skipping. And their statistics prove that skipping is a mature and intelligent alternative to jogging.

``Skipping is about 70 percent as efficient as jogging in cardiovascular expenditure,`` Holleb says of their findings, ``which means your heart has to work harder when you skip. In other words, five miles of skipping is roughly equivalent to seven miles of jogging in terms of total exercise. And it`s less stressful on your joints, especially your knees. Basically, it`s a better workout in less time and it`s better on your legs.``

Sounds too good to be true, especially for those who hate to jog. But the graduate students did discover one stumbling block to skipping: It makes adults look silly.

``I don`t think they`ll follow up their study,`` Holleb says. ``They said everybody in the lab was laughing at them while they were doing it.``

Outside of the lab, the best test for any exercise, laughable or not, is its acceptance by professional athletes. Chicago`s teams hold varying attitudes toward skipping.

On one side is Karl-Heinz Granitza, the Chicago Sting star, who says the soccer team does no full-scale skipping, though they do include hopping and rope-skipping in their warm-ups. But if coach Willy Roy instructed them to skip, Granitza admits he and his teammates would obey. ``Or else we would not be released (from practice),`` he says, laughing.

About looking stupid while skipping, Granitza has a practical view.

``What is stupid? If everybody does this, then it`s not stupid anymore.``

On the other side is Bears trainer Fred Caito, who notes that beyond rope-skipping, the activity has little application to football. ``We`re trying to prepare our players for a contact sport,`` he says. No doubt about it:

Skipping is devoid of contact.

In between are the Black Hawks. They ``do a lot of rope-skipping,``

according to trainer Skip Thayer, who says he has seen research proving that rope-skipping is better for a person than jogging.

But Thayer isn`t ready to tell the players to go for a nice, long skip.

So odds are you won`t see your favorite athlete skipping through Lincoln Park anytime soon. But if you`re involved in aerobics, one day you may have to swallow a little pride and romp on the balls of your feet. As the saying goes, everyone else is doing it and, hey, it`s good for you.